Killer Called Angry Loner

September 17, 1999|By JIM YARDLEY The New York Times

FORT WORTH, Texas — The man who walked into the Wedgwood Baptist Church on Wednesday did not look like he belonged to the congregation. No one apparently knew Larry Gene Ashbrook or what this man in blue jeans and a black leather jacket might want. People would later learn that he was a jobless loner, an ex-sailor prone to foul moods and feared by several of his neighbors.

But at that moment, the only thing that seemed strange was that he was smoking a cigarette in church. A janitor approached him about the cigarette, and the authorities say Ashbrook shot him. He shot a woman sitting nearby in the head. And then he followed the sounds of music and voices into the main sanctuary where hundreds of teen-agers had gathered for a contemporary Christian music concert. He walked inside and began firing.

"People were crying," said Bob Bollinger, a Sunday school director. "They didn't understand it. They were in shock."

By the time the night was over, seven people were killed, three of them teen-agers, and Ashbrook became the eighth fatality when he turned the gun on himself. Seven other people were wounded, two of whom remained in critical condition on Thursday.

As investigators gathered evidence about Ashbrook's rampage and as local officials sought to comfort a grieving city, the suspect emerged as an angry, desperate man who apparently had called two local newspapers in recent months to say he fantasized about serial killers.

In Washington, President Clinton decried the attack and offered the nation's sympathy to the victims, their families and the people of Fort Worth. "Yet again, we have seen a sanctuary violated by gun violence, taking children brimming with faith and promise and hope, before their time," he said.

Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential front-runner, canceled campaign appearances in Michigan and went to a hospital Thursday to comfort the families of the victims.

Ralph Mendoza, the Fort Worth acting police chief, said Ashbrook, 47, apparently screamed insults about "the Baptist religion" during the shooting, but investigators had not yet discerned his motives.

Ashbrook did not leave a suicide note or any written evidence of his intentions, the police chief said. He lived several miles from Wedgwood Baptist, and members of the church had no idea why he chose them as a target.

"He was saying, `Your religion is nothing, it's not worth anything, it means nothing,'" said Mary Beth Talley, 17, who was wounded in the attack.

Local police and federal agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Thursday morning searched the home Ashbrook had shared with his late parents and uncovered the raw materials for a pipe bomb. The house had been badly damaged, with holes kicked in the walls and cement poured into the toilets. It looked as though Ashbrook had left on a mission from which he did not intend to return.

Mendoza said Ashbrook threw a pipe bomb into the front of the sanctuary during his attack. As details from the shootings emerged, church members told of acts of heroism.

As Ashbrook sprayed bullets from two handguns, teen-agers ducked for cover in the pews. But Heather McDonald, a young woman with Down syndrome, remained sitting upright, apparently confused. Talley shielded the girl with her body as the suspect fired and hit her.

"I just kept saying to Heather, `You've got to be quiet and stay down with me,'" Talley said Thursday. Even after she was shot, Talley kept comforting her friend. "I just wanted to make sure she was calm."

Another church member, S.M. "Chip" Gillette, was watching television in his nearby home when he noticed his dog barking furiously at the window. Gillette, an off-duty Fort Worth police officer, saw people streaming out of the church. He radioed for police help, grabbed his service revolver and rushed inside the front door with a uniformed officer who had just arrived.

Gillette said he ran toward the gunshots and arrived just after Ashbrook shot himself as he sat in a back pew. Investigators said Ashbrook used semi-automatic handguns, a 9 mm Ruger and a .380-caliber AMT. He fired at least 30 shots, and officers found 10 Ruger ammunition clips in his pockets and near his body. He bought both guns in February 1992 at licensed firearms dealers in a flea market-type operation just outside Forth Worth, investigators said.

In South Florida, Baptist churches urged members to pray for victims and their families.

First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale asked the faithful to pray for Jay Fannin, the Wedgwood church's youth minister who belonged to the Fort Lauderdale church's youth program as a teen-ager. Fannin was not among the victims.

At First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, the Rev. Tim Beverly encouraged church workers to pray, and said believers should stand firm in their faith.